


Pinachia

by mutuisanimis



Category: Young Wizards - Diane Duane
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-27
Updated: 2015-06-27
Packaged: 2018-04-06 09:47:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4217016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mutuisanimis/pseuds/mutuisanimis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dairine knows something is wrong. Partly because it’s still dark, partly because her alarm hasn’t gone off, but primarily because Spot is standing on very tall legs chanting in her ear, “Something is wrong. Something is <i>wrong</i>!”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pinachia

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Hexx](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hexx/gifts).



> I hope you enjoy this, Hexx!
> 
> Eternal and unending gratitude to iridescentoracle, muse_in_absentia, and wanderingskywatcher for assorted plotting and betaing services at odd hours of the night and without me holding up on my end very well, as well as to R and to K for listening to me whine a whole lot.
> 
> Any remaining errors are my own, and do please point them out.

The sky is a dazzling yellow at the horizon, fading into a gentler yellow as eyes travel upwards, then orange, then finally a deep purple where night is falling at last. Black will come, in time, but for now, Dairine Callahan is content just to watch the light of the star Aristhis dip lower and lower and the shadows grow longer and longer, satisfied with her work.

She sits on the front porch steps of what is best described as a small farmhouse, leaning back on her hands, legs in jeans sprawled in front of her. Warm air blows across her face from the great field that surrounds the place. This guest house is isolated, but Dairine doesn’t mind the quiet. It’s nice to have a building that’s tall enough for hominids.

The last bit of yellow is just falling out of the sky when Dairine hears the whoosh of a door behind her. Her partner comes forward and joins her on the steps, shamelessly shoving her aside with his elbow to give himself enough space. Dairine narrows her eyes at him, goodnaturedly, and wastes no time seizing a lock of long blond hair and giving it a gentle yank.

“Excuse you!” Roshaun exclaims. “That was uncalled for.”

“Shoving me was uncalled for,” Dairine retorts automatically. They sit in silence for a few minutes, watching Thoait’s sun slip further and further beyond the horizon. When night has truly fallen, and the porch has begun to glow automatically with wizard lights, Roshaun speaks again.

“You did good work today.”

Dairine leans her head against his arm. “You, too, buddy.”

He pushes back against her head as he makes to stand up. “Come on. You can feel from here that Aristhis is stable. They will want to debrief tomorrow, and we had best be rested for that.” On his feet, he reaches down and offers Dairine a hand up. She ignores it in favor of catapulting herself forward and off the steps, then turns to face him in the dim porch light, a tired smile on her face.

“Lead the way.”

When Dairine wakes in the morning, she knows something is wrong. Partly because even with Thoait’s short night it’s still dark, partly because her alarm hasn’t gone off, but primarily because Spot is standing on very tall legs chanting in her ear, “Something is wrong. Something is _wrong!_ ”

“Hnnh?” she inquires groggily.

“Something is _wrong!_ ” Spot insists.

Dairine can’t find the switch for her vocal cords this early in the morning, it seems, so she untangles a hand from her blankets and thumps it gently onto Spot. _What’s wrong?_ she asks through wizardry. _Is Roshaun alright? Is the star alright?_

“The star is fine,” says Spot. “Roshaun is fine. But you should go get him. A message just came in from Wohh that something is _wrong!_ You need to go.”

 _Read me the message,_ Dairine demands as she crawls out of what amounts to a twin sized futon bed and begins searching for her clothes.

“Dairine,” Spot reads in his tinny little voice. “I’m in Moor’a, the capital city of this territory. I know we planned to meet at your house this morning to discuss Aristhis and its stability, but some sort of crisis has come up, which I don’t fully understand. If at all convenient, could you and your team meet me here?” Spot pauses to rattle off some coordinates and follows Dairine as she goes to wake Roshaun up, pulling her shirt down over her head as she goes. As they enter Roshaun’s sleeping room, Spot finishes, “Thank you for your help, and hopefully we will not need more of it. Travel safely, cousins. _Dai stihó._ ”

The lump of blankets on this low bed starts to move, and Roshaun’s voice grumbles, “Spot? What is happening? What is the time?”

Dairine leans down to shake Roshaun’s shoulder, and Spot reverts to his mantra. “Something is wrong. Something is _wrong!_ ”

Dairine clears her throat and starts to speak. “It’s early. Not even dawn here. Wohh has an emergency at the territory capital and left us a message to join her. Get dressed, I’m going to make food.” She tears the covers back, just to make a point, then returns to her room.

In the five years since Roshaun arrived in Dairine’s back yard, his little wizardly pup tent has seen a great deal of use. These days, Dairine is fairly certain that neither of them even thinks of it as _his_ anymore so much as _theirs_ , or maybe even just _the_. Now, no matter where they end up, if they have the pup tent, they have a kitchen of sorts.

Dairine walks straight past her bed and her duffel bag on the ground and goes to where the shimmering pup tent access rod hangs in the air. She pulls down on the tab, then steps inside and begins pulling stasis spells off of the bread, cheese, salami, and Wellakhit heavyfruit. At the table in the center of the pup tent room, she makes three sandwiches, cuts one in half, and puts one and half into each of two bags. Then she peels two heavyfruits, puts each in a smaller baggie before sticking them in with the sandwiches. Finally, having replaced the stases on the perishable foods, she grabs a couple energy bars and sports drinks to drop into the bags as well.

Bags in hand, she reenters her bedroom to find Spot in the middle of her bed, no longer chanting at full speed, just periodically muttering “wrong!” Dairine sets the food bags beside her duffel and runs a hand over Spot’s lid.

“You okay, little guy?”

Spot hums under her fingers and says quietly, “We need to go.”

Dairine picks him up and hugs him to her chest for an instant, then sets him beside the bags. “Hang tight. I need to pack up and then we’ll leave.” She quickly makes her bed and collects her dirty clothes and pajamas from the floor, shoving them haphazardly into her duffel. Dairine is just zipping it shut as Roshaun walks in, his own trunk of clothes floating behind him.

Dairine points to the bags of food. “The one with the cherry drink is for you. Stick your trunk in the tent and let’s get out of here. Spot is worried.”

Roshaun reaches down for her bag as well. “I’ll put these away if you start the transit circle.”

It’s a formality, the offer. This is how they always do things. So Dairine lifts Spot’s lid and pulls out a transit circle, inputting the coordinates that Wohh had left in her message. When Roshaun returns, he checks the spelling. Satisfied, they each pick up their breakfasts, recite the spell, and vanish.

They come out of transit in dawn light behind a large building made of some sort of pink sandstone. Once they’ve regained their footing, Dairine starts looking around for Wohh amidst the sea of people surrounding them, even at this early hour. The native inhabitants of Thoait are some kind of cephalopod, probably closest to an octopus, Dairine thinks, but with dry scales and only four large tentacles. They stay low to the ground, which makes it easy for Dairine, though not outrageously tall by Terran standards, to survey everyone around her and immediately pick out her target.

“Wohh!” she calls, waving to a light green Thoai off to the right. Wohh catches Dairine’s eye and makes her way over.

“Well met, cousins,” she says. Her voice is deep and smooth, but laced with anxiety. “Come around to the front and enter this building. We have much to discuss.” With that, she starts pushing past the other Thoai on the road, toward the entrance. Dairine picks Spot up and follows, Roshaun behind her. They walk carefully so as not to step on anyone.

Once they get to the entrance, Wohh presents an eye to the scanner to open the door and ushers them inside. The hall they come into is wide and tall. Dairine and Roshaun benefit from the open staircase that leads to the second floor, since it keeps the ceiling far enough above their heads that they don’t have to stoop. The room is brightly lit and richly decorated, but they have no time to admire any of it, as Wohh leads them quickly into an office toward the back of the hall.

The ceiling here is too low, but once they are seated around a low table they are comfortable enough. Dairine sets Spot down on the table and lets him stretch out.

“So,” Wohh begins. “What did you do to our star?”

Dairine and Roshaun trade looks. That sounded a lot more accusatory than grateful, and weren’t they _invited_ here? For the express purpose of dealing with the star?

So Roshaun very neutrally launches into an explanation of everything they did: rearranging unbalanced mass, speaking to the heart of the star, feeding some of its energy off to the empty space beyond their solar system. Spot shows diagrams on his screen to help clarify what Roshaun says. Wohh taps the table periodically with one tentacle as she listens.

“Alright, that’s fine, then,” she says.

There’s an awkward silence.

“So what—” Dairine begins, just as Wohh continues.

“The problem is that the machines we use to keep track of Aristhis and its behavior are not picking up any signal whatsoever anymore, and Lyra hasn’t been able to figure out what happened. He’s been upstairs trying to fix them since halfway through your intervention last night, and just isn’t getting anywhere. Do you have any idea what you might have done to interfere?”

Roshaun glances over at Dairine again, and she shrugs minutely. “Spot?” she asks. “Any ideas?”

Spot’s screen goes blank, then loads the record and précis of their intervention. “Nope,” he says shortly, shy around Wohh. Dairine and Roshaun both shake their heads.

“I am at a loss,” Roshaun says. “I do not have much skill with machines.” He shoots Dairine one more look, and when he catches her eye he mouths, “Kit?”

“Mm,” Dairine agrees, then turns her attention back to their host. “Wohh, would you like us to call in one of our friends who is good with machines? It could be useful to have a second pair of eyes, especially if we did do it somehow, since he might recognize our influence more quickly.”

Wohh considers for a moment. “Yes, that would be acceptable. For now this has been contained only to our team, but Lyra is afraid what will happen if the planetary council finds out.”

Roshaun nods his understanding and Dairine voices hers. “We’ll have Kit here to help Lyra out as soon as we can. May we return to the guest house?”

“Of course,” Wohh says. “Please keep me updated.”

Cross-galaxy time differences are a challenge, but they manage to get ahold of Kit only a few solar systems away within a few hours.

“You’re lucky I’m an unemployed college kid this summer,” he says loftily at the other end of the phone. “I might not have had time to do this.”

Dairine rolls her eyes. “Somehow you usually find the time. And thanks.”

Kit arrives at their guest house by evening that day on Thoait. They all gate to Moor’a, much emptier now, with the locals home for the night. Wohh is waiting for them outside the pink sandstone building to let them in, but she does not accompany them up to the room where Lyra is working. Luckily for Roshaun’s posture, unlike the meeting room from that morning, the room is enormous. Dairine estimates the ceiling is fifteen feet up, and the exposed floor has to be fifty feet across. There are seven walls, six covered top to bottom by machinery.

Lyra is on the farthest wall from the door, fiddling with some sort of control panel. He turns around, then immediately lopes across the room toward them. He presses a tentacle quickly against Dairine’s and Roshaun’s arms before turning to Kit.

“Nice to meet you,” he says, offering one of his tentacles up to shake. Dairine had been amused to learn that that custom was the same in this area as it was in her homeland.

“Well met indeed, cousin,” Kit replies. He drops Lyra’s tentacle after a moment and walks over to the main interface of the machine, pressing his palms against it. “And who are you?” he murmurs.

Dairine watches Kit move methodically about the room, his lips moving silently as he examines the machine. In addition to covering every wall but the one where the door is, it has a couple partitions that jut out four or five feet into the floor at half the height of the wall pieces. Kit presses his hands against the walls everywhere he can reach, trying to get to know its “mind” as quickly as possible, Dairine assumes.

Lyra follows Kit’s movements as well, but after a minute turns his gaze to Spot and then Dairine. “Would you—would your associate be able to connect or help at all?” he asks. Dairine had wondered about that earlier in the day, but usually Spot would offer if it seemed like he could be useful.

She nudges Spot gently with her foot. “What say you?”

Spot directs his eyestalks toward her. “Can try,” he says shortly. He scuttles over to the same place Kit started at and snakes out some some cables to link up with. He can’t have been connected to the main computer for more than forty seconds before he roughly disengages and comes rushing back to Dairine.

“Something is wrong. Something is _wrong!_ ”

“Details, _wahit_ ,” Roshaun commands, though kindly. He uses a Wellakhit word, one of the few Dairine really knows, and it pleases her as much as always to hear him call Spot “little boss.”

“Something is wrong. Something is _wrong!_ ” Spot repeats.

“But what?” asks Lyra. “What is it that is wrong?”

“Something is _wrong!_ ”

Dairine gathers Spot in her arms. “Okay. Something is wrong. Thank you, guy. We’ll figure it out.” She turns to Lyra. “I don’t know what’s got Spot so worked up about it, but it can’t be purely mechanical. I’ll try to tease some answers out of this one if I can, but…you and Kit might be on your own here.”

“Something is _wrong_.” Spot agrees quietly.

Lyra sighs, his whole body and all his tentacles rippling with it. “Well, I suppose that’s no worse that where I was this morning. Thanks for bringing Kit in. We’ll keep you updated on progress here.”

“Thank you,” says Dairine, and Roshaun echoes her. “We’ll go down and check in with Wohh. Unless she needs something from us, we’ll be back at the guest house. Send a message our way if you need anything.”

Lyra offers a tentacle first to Dairine then to Roshaun to shake good-bye. “Go well, cousins.”

“Go well,” they echo.

As Roshaun is opening the door, Dairine calls over her shoulder, “ _Dai_ , Kit!” She sees a half-hearted wave in their direction, then follows Roshaun out the door and down the grand staircase, Spot still in her arms.

When they reach the ground floor, Wohh is nowhere to be found.

“Let’s go back to the guest house and rest,” Dairine says. “I’ll send her a message when we get there. I could use a nap, though.”

“So be it,” Roshaun replies with a smile. Then he gestures around them in the atrium. “For departure, does this ground suit?”

Dairine answers with a grin and a nod, already calling the transit circle out from Spot’s memory. They read the spell together, and as always Dairine revels in the feeling of the Universe leaning in to listen. Then they vanish.

~~~

Nita needs less violent friends. In particular, she needs friends who don’t push her off the couch just for telling the truth. In fairness, Ronan probably thinks he needs friends who are less willing to call him on his excessively moody BS, but he’s just gonna have to deal for now. Kit’s been gone on a string of off-world interventions for several days, so there’s no one to run interference.

“Owww.” Nita sits up on the living room floor in her dad’s house, rubbing her hip and pulling a pouty face at Ronan.

“Don’t think that lip makes me sorry! Keep your nose in your own love life, you over-invested gossip.”

Nita rolls her eyes and turns to lean back against the couch, not rising from the floor. “It’s not gossiping if I’m talking about you with _you_. And fine, I brought it up, but you keep looking at your phone like it’s going to bite you. If Jesse’s not talking to you, then you gotta talk to Jesse or nothing’s gonna happen. And you’re no fun to hang out with when you’re like this.”

“Ohhhh, I get it,” Ronan drawls, scooting down the couch to kick her gently in the shoulder. “This is all for _your_ benefit. I could just go home if I’m such a pain in your arse.”

Nita is debating with herself whether to get back up on the couch or retreat into the kitchen for a drink when her own phone rings, Star Wars main title muffled by the couch cushions. She turns around to find it, but Ronan is already pressing it into her hand.

“Dair?” Nita asks, sliding her finger over the screen to answer. “Aren’t you halfway across the universe right now?”

“Oh good, you’re awake,” says Dairine in her ear. “Yeah, about that. Kit came out to help us with something but he’s disappeared. Just wanted to let you know we’re on it and—” But Nita cuts her off, scrambling to her feet.

“Wait, wait, wait, back up. When did he come out to help you, where is ‘out’, and—actually, never mind. Let’s start with ‘where is “out”’. You can explain in person.” Ronan is staring at her quizzically, so Nita mouths _get your stuff_ at him and then does head for the kitchen and her shoes.

Dairine huffs a sigh into the phone but replies, “I’ll text you the coordinates. Stop by that fancy little grocery store and get a few discs of Mexican chocolate before you come, will you?”

Nita, sitting on the entryway steps and untying her shoelaces, breathes in sharply. “That bad?”

“Unclear,” Dairine says. “Better safe than sorry, and since you’re coming from Earth anyway…”

“Fine,” says Nita, not too harshly. “I’ve got Ronan with me, too. Are you okay? Roshaun?” Ronan has plopped down beside her and started doing up his own shoes.

“Yeah. We’re fine. Get a move on if you’re coming. Use Carmela’s closet.” Nita’s phone beeps the end of the call, and she shoves it in her pocket.

“What—” Ronan starts to ask, but Nita doesn’t hear the rest of the question because she’s bounding upstairs for her wallet. While she’s looking, she calls her dad. It goes to voicemail, which Nita is never sure whether she prefers or not.

“Hi Daddy,” she says. “Dairine just called for some back-up. She, Roshaun, and Kit are working on something, so Ronan and I are going out to see what’s up. Not sure when we’ll be back. I’ll keep you posted. Love you!” She keeps her voice calm and deliberately doesn’t comment on the severity or nature of the situation. Lying may increase entropy, but so, in her experience, does sharing incomplete information.

She spots her wallet under her desk and grabs it as well as a jacket before heading back downstairs. Ronan is still by the door, so she punches his shoulder on her way to open it. “Ready to go?”

“Yeah, where are we going, exactly?” He taps the lock switch on the door and pulls it closed behind them with practiced ease. Maybe, Nita thinks, she’ll keep this friend around despite his couch-shoving tendencies.

“First to María’s,” she says. “Then to…here.” She opens her text conversation with Dairine and shows Ronan the coordinates.

“Who’s María?”

“It’s the name of a fancy little grocery store that sells fancy Mexican chocolate. Dairine asked me to bring some. Apparently Kit went out to help her and Roshaun with something and has gone missing. That’s all I know.”

“Right,” Ronan agrees. They walk quickly but silently until Ronan says, “He’s listed in the Knowledge as on the planet Thoait. He’s not, you know, _missing_.”

Nita feels something unlock itself in her chest, an anxiety she hadn’t even consciously considered.

 _I could have told you that, too,_ Bobo offers in the back of her mind.

“Good,” she says to Ronan, instead of answering Bobo. She’s saved from further comment by the door of María’s.

Four minutes later, chocolate discs safely in her otherspace pocket, Nita and Ronan are going back the way they came, headed for the Rodriguezes’ house. When they get there, no one is home, so Nita fishes the spare key out from under the decorative rock in the back garden and lets them in, then quickly replaces it.

They find Carmela’s gate in a mostly empty closet, since she’s been living mostly off-planet for a few years. Nita punches in the coordinates and whistles at the distance. No wonder Dairine had told her to do this.

“After you, Trouble,” Ronan says when the gate becomes patent. Nita fixes him with a look somewhere between extremely exasperated and fondly amused, then grabs his hand, pulling him through behind her.

Nita has no idea what they’re getting into. She hasn’t actually spoken to her sister in a couple weeks, since Dari more or less lives on Wellakh and Nita herself has been splitting her time between a long-dive underwater project with S’reee and being Ronan’s life coach.

It takes the two of them a minute or so to adjust to the environment they land in. The gravity and air composition are not remarkably different from Earth’s, but long jumps like that often upset one’s personal equilibrium and/or stomach. Nita rises from where she had fallen on the ground and stretches out her back, then offers Ronan a hand up.

They’re in the middle of a vast field of some foot-high vegetation. About a hundred yards off there’s a small house, and Nita sees Dairine waving them over.

“ _Dai_ ,” says Dairine when they get over to the house. “That was quick. Good. Come in and sit down, we have some talking to do.”

Nita bites back a snappish retort and follows her sister inside. Dairine is not at fault here. Well, there’s a 97% probability she’s not, anyway.

The main room on the first floor of the house is empty but for a table and the four beings seated at it. Nita, Ronan, and Dairine draw up chairs to join Roshaun, Spot, and two octopus-looking people.

“Ah, welcome to Thoait,” says Roshaun. “Wohh, Lyra, may I introduce our esteemed colleagues Nita Callahan and Ronan Nolan.” He gestures to each of them in turn, then says, “Cousins, meet our honorable hosts Wohh”—he points to the greenish one—“and Lyra”—the brownish one.

“ _Dai stihó_ ,” Nita and Ronan say together. Were she less worried, Nita would probably have laughed, but….

The one called Wohh makes something like a throat-clearing sound. “The situation is this. Your colleague Kit came here to assist Lyra with work on our sun-tracking machine. Dairine and Roshaun completed an intervention with our sun approximately thirty hours ago, stabilizing it after it had been shooting off dangerous flares. During the intervention, our tracker failed. The planetary council relies on its information most heavily, so we sought to repair it as quickly as possible and without their notice.”

No one makes to interrupt. Nita’s first thought is that that sort of dishonesty can be very destructive, but it’s not her place to comment on that just now. _Also,_ Bobo murmurs, _is that not what you did with your dad a few hours ago?_ Touché, Nita thinks.

“Lyra,” Wohh continues, “can you fill us in on what happened with the tracker?”

Lyra drums a tentacle on the table for a moment, then begins speaking. “Kit and I worked together for a number of hours. He joined me shortly before the middle of the night yesterday, and I went home to rest some time during the fourth hour of the day. We made no progress whatsoever on the mechanical side of things, just as Dairine had predicted, but Kit thought he was having some success speaking to the soul of the machine, and he said he was not tired, so I left him to it.”

Dairine picks up. “But around the ninth hour this morning Lyra appeared here, where Roshaun and I have been staying, and said Kit was gone. So we went with him back to the building, looked all around, and Kit wasn’t there. He was grayed out in the manual, so we left messages but it’s unclear that he’s seeing them; certainly he’s not responding to them. That was…” She looks at Spot, “…about four hours ago.”

Nita looks around. Ronan clears his own throat. “So now what?”

Roshaun lets out the least dignified sigh Nita’s ever heard from him. It’s still Roshaun, but the part of her brain not trying to solve the Kit problem is entertained to see Dairine’s further influence on him.

“Wohh estimates we have about two hours until she has to come clean to the council, which you can imagine she’d like to avoid. Did you—Dairine mentioned she asked you to bring some chocolate?”

Nita reaches into her otherspace pocket, grabs the handful of discs she got at María’s, and hands them over to Roshaun. “Who are you bribing?”

“The council, possibly. Since all this has gone wrong while we were here, despite having been invited, they will probably blame us if they find out. But that’s for later. Or never, hopefully.”

Ronan taps the table. “I say again, _now what?_ ”

It’s Nita’s turn to sigh. “Let’s go back to that building and see what we see. I wish I’d thought to grab his toothbrush or something from home; I’ve read about some DNA-linked tracking spells…”

“Oh really?” Ronan asks, almost amused. “I was fairly certain those were illegal, Neets.”

Nita flushes and bites her lip. “Well. Yeah. But apparently we’re already in trouble with this local government, so.” She pushes her chair back from the table and makes for the door. “Who’s sharing energy with me on this?”

Roshaun and Wohh end up staying behind at the guest house to make a contingency plan for notifying the planetary council. Nita does not envy Roshaun in the slightest. Terran politics give her enough confusion and anxiety as it is—she has no desire to be involved elsewhere.

The rest of the group does a beam-me-up spell into Moor’a, which Lyra says is the capital city for their territory. It’s just about midday locally, according to Bobo, so Nita is not surprised to see dozens of Thoai every direction she looks. Dairine, oddly, _does_ look surprised, and when Nita turns her attention to Lyra, she sees that he has paled from a medium brown nearly to white.

Dairine points at a relatively large open space surrounded by Thoai who seem to be staring at it. “Where…?”

“It was there,” Lyra says. “That’s where the building was that Kit disappeared from. What has happened?”

In the open space Nita can see what looks like remnants of a foundation of a building, almost of if it had been ripped from the ground like in _The Wizard of Oz_. She looks around at the other buildings and the sky, but there’s just no way that that’s what happened. Someone would have noticed.

She nudges Dairine. “Remember that time I sent your bed to Pluto?”

Dairine groans. “Yeah, but why—oh. But who…?”

“They’re gonna say it’s Kit,” says Ronan. “There’s no way this doesn’t get to the council by the end of the day, and there’s no way they don’t blame Kit unless we find out what happened.”

“Good thing they’re working on plan B,” Dairine grumbles. “But seriously, who would do this? Who would have the motive or capability?”

“Hush,” says Nita, holding up a finger. She concentrates on Kit in her mind. Kit? she calls silently, searching for a connection to his mind in her own. They almost never mindtouch anymore. The older they get and the longer they’ve been together…in some ways it’s because they need the privacy, but in other ways it’s simply because they don’t need to. But now they need to, so Nita’s doing the best she can.

 _Kit?_ she calls again. _Kit, can you hear me? Where are you?_ Nothing. Nita shakes her head.

“Let’s go down and look at the remains,” she suggests out loud.

“Go ahead,” says Lyra. “I’m going to contact Wohh and let her know what has happened.”

Nita starts to walk toward the empty space, Dairine, Spot, and Ronan behind her. But the closer she gets to the building site, the stranger she feels. “Do you…?” she starts to ask, but she loses the end of the question before she can finish it.

“Step back, Nita!” Dairine orders. “Spot, run a diagnostic wizardry on that building site, radius of forty feet.”

“You okay there, Trouble?” Ronan asks softly as he holds her shoulders. Nita shivers for a moment, snapping out of whatever it was, then deliberately shakes her body out.

“Why do you call me that?” she demands as she kicks her legs one at a time. “Out of all of our friends, I am the least deserving of that name.”

“Oh, sure, Miss Almost-Got-Eaten-By-A-Shark.”

“Almost! The key word is _almost_.” It’s a well-worn and useless argument. Nita has long since accepted the name and is just grateful it’s not Louise. She feels better for having had the discussion, though.

She bends over to touch her toes, then straightens up, feeling much more normal. “Dair? Spot? What do you know?”

“It’s…a doozy,” says Dairine. “There’s a cloaking and a repelling spell, both extremely powerful. It took us several different tries even to find them.” She shakes her head, impressed. “The building is still _there_. It just really doesn’t want anyone to know.”

“They lose a lot of their effectiveness now that we know they are there,” Lyra says, coming up to join them. “We should be able to deconstruct them, but I don’t know how quickly. We may even be able to get past them with brute force, though I’m not confident about that. We should clear everyone else out of here, too.”

 _Get closer and try the mindtouch again,_ says Bobo. _And I can examine the spells, too._

Nita holds up a finger to the rest of the group again and steps forward. She can feel the power of the repelling spell, but now that she knows what it is, she can keep herself together more easily.

 _Kit? Kit!_ There’s no answer. _Bobo, are you getting good data, at least?_

 _Yes,_ replies the peridexis. _Just another minute or so._

 _KIT!_ Nita tries again, at the top of her mental lungs. Then she feels it—the slightest touch in the back of her mind. _Bobo, can you amplify this?_

_Just a moment. Yes, there, I have the data. Feeding power to the mindtouch, energy price to be paid at end of contact._

_Fine, fine, just do it!_ Nita feels the power building and the sense of Kit’s mind gets stronger. _KIT! Where are you?_

His mental voice is quiet and sort of fuzzy. _’mokay,_ he says. _I think? Neets? Wha?_

 _You sound disoriented,_ says Nita. _Is someone with you? Who hid the building?_

 _Pinachia—she—_  Kit’s voice fades out, and Nita strains to bring him back.

 _Nita, stop._ Bobo cuts in. _You’re going to need this power, and I need to give Spot the  data I collected._

Nita slams her fist into her hip but acquiesces. _Hang in there, darlin’,_ she thinks at Kit before she lets the connection drop entirely.

She steps back and falls flat on her butt, energy leaving her like a flood. She takes a couple deep breaths and waits for her blood pressure to come back up, then coughs and calls for Spot. He whizzes toward her on his many legs. Dairine follows, leaving Ronan and Lyra laying the beginning of a spell diagram several yards away. All the spectators have gone.

“Bobo did a deeper analysis of the spells,” Nita says, extending a hand toward Spot’s shell. “May I?”

“Affirmative,” Spot chirps. Nita grips the corner of Spot’s body, just below the arrow keys on the keyboard and lets information from the peridexis flow through her. This process has never totally made sense to her, but Bobo and Spot assure her that it’s very efficient, and most days that’s good enough.

 _Thank you,_ Bobo says. _We are finished._ Nita lies back on the ground and takes some more deep breaths. She hears Spot hurrying back to Ronan and Lyra to share the new information.

“You okay, Neets?” asks Dairine.

Nita lets out a long breath. “Yeah. I’m alright. I think Kit is still in there, but someone’s keeping him hostage somehow. He said ‘Pinachia—she—’. I don’t know who that is.”

“But he’s okay?” Nita feels a rush of affection for her sister. Dairine keeps her head in a crisis, but she is genuinely worried about Kit and—well, Nita’s not entirely sure how to explain it, but she’s glad Dairine is here.

“Yeah,” Nita answers. “I think so. Thank you.” She opens her eyes and finds Dairine’s staring right at her. Dairine gives a small nod, then offers Nita a hand up. Nita accepts.

“Do you recognize the name Pinachia?” Nita asks Lyra, when she and Dairine rejoin the group. Lyra freezes.

“That’s…the tracker,” he says slowly. “That’s the nickname my old apprentice gave it.”

“I was able to reach Kit mind-to-mind,” Nita says in response to Lyra’s unvoiced question. “It didn’t last long, but he said ‘Pinachia—she—’ when I asked who was involved.”

Lyra’s mouth hangs open, and Nita wonders whether that expression conveys astonishment among the Thoai like it does among Terrans.

“‘She’?” Ronan asks. “Like, the machine is a ‘she’?”

“Spot!” says Dairine. “Quicklife?”

“Could be,” Spot agrees. Dairine scoops him up and presses her hands against his shell. They are silent together for a long minute.

~~~

Dairine feeds Spot power and lets the onslaught of conversation that comes when they reach the mobiles wash over her. She listens as best she can, but she knows at the end, Spot will condense and slow down the critical info for her.

“Okay,” Dairine says after a minute that seems to last for quicklife hours. “The consensus among Spot and the mobiles is that Pinachia is probably not a wizard, she would be too newly born. More likely she just somehow got control of Kit and used his own wizardry against him. We propose the modifications shown on Spot’s screen to the spell you have outlined, the better to dismantle the spells enacted by two disparate consciousnesses.”

She stops and replays that sentence in her head. “Sorry, I let Logo’s words come straight out my mouth. Look at Spot. Do those changes suit?”

Lyra, Ronan, and Nita examine Spot’s screen and nod. “They suit,” Lyra confirms. Then he points at the screen, where a message notification has popped up. “And Roshaun says they are running out of time to delay the council. Spot, please update the spell circle. Cousins, please check the spelling.”

From there, everything feels like it happens at quicklife speed, though Dairine knows it really doesn’t. The four wizards read the spell together, the universe stops to listen, and when they finish with the Knot, the building in front of them shimmers back into existence. Or appearance. It comes back.

Nita bounds toward it, Ronan on her heels, but pulls up short when she reaches the locked front door.

“I’m coming!” Lyra shouts after them. “I’ll scan you in!”

Dairine is amazed to watch him practically gallop on his tentacles to follow them. Spot speeds along after Lyra, and Dairine brings up the rear at a light jog. She reaches the front door, which Spot is holding open for her by sitting in front of the latch, then picks him up and follows everyone else up the grand staircase.

When she reaches the room with the machine, she sees Nita kneeling over Kit, slumped on the floor. Lyra is cautiously checking out the main control panel, and Ronan is staring around in wonder.

“Stp shking meeeeeee.” Dairine hears Kit groan as he sits up. Nita herself lets go of his shoulder and sits back to give him some space while he rubs at his eyes.

“You okay, bro?” Dairine calls across the room.

“Hi,” he answers dumbly.

“Hi,” Nita says back. Dairine wonders if Nita’s really as calm as she sounds.

“Spot,” Dairine asks, “how’s the machine? She gonna take any of us over?”

“Doubtful,” replies her computer. “I still can’t communicate with her very well, but I suspect what she wanted was attention, and she got it. We’ll have to negotiate with her later. I’m worried Kit will have to be involved, but hopefully he can rest and recover first, and we’ll find a way to protect him.”

“Thank you,” says Dairine, and she kisses Spot on the back of his screen, just behind the webcam.

It ends up being fairly straightforward. For Dairine and her friends, anyway.

Spot gets a strong message through to Pinachia, consisting of STOP. WAIT. WE’LL RETURN. Nita and Ronan help Kit down the stairs and outside. Lyra locks up the building. Spot suggests returning to the guest house, but Dairine shakes her head. “I don’t want to let this place out of my sight until we are clear on what happened.”

So they sit on the ground and debrief. Kit explains that, in trying to see the world from the machine’s perspective, to suss out what had gone wrong, he became so wrapped up in the machine that he couldn’t get back out.

“She kept saying I was her—” He pauses. “Yeah, I think the phrase she used was something to the effect of ‘knight in shining armor’, there to ‘rescue her’ and ‘make her known’ to the rest of the world, and I could ‘help her rule’.”

Ronan bursts out laughing and everyone turns to look at him.

“What is it,” he asks, “with you and deranged alien princesses?” Kit rolls his eyes but laughs along with everyone else.

“Look me up later if you’re curious,” he tells Lyra. “I’m not telling that story right now.”

“Honestly, ought to get you a shirt,” says Ronan. “‘I belong to Nita Callahan. Yes, of the Unfavorable Instigation. Do not kidnap.’”

“Oh, come _onnn_.” Kit groans and puts his head in his hands.

Nita leans her head over on his shoulder. “Ro’s kinda right, you know.”

“Shut up, shut _upppp_.”

“Kit, you’re a wimp,” says Dairine.

Lyra sends a recording of Kit’s statement to Wohh and the planetary council. Dairine sends Roshaun a message, telling him to bring the pup tent and join them in Moor’a, which he does.

The group sits around waiting and eating. Lyra is particularly fascinated by the sports drinks. Kit refuses any help getting his food, and he comes to sit and talk with Spot about the nature of quicklife and shared consciousness.

Dairine lets it go for three or four minutes, but then she can’t stand it. “Oh, stop playing cool,” she says, socking Kit in the shoulder. “Your need for a hug is all over your face. Go snuggle with my sister or whatever.”

Kit flushes, but he makes no snappy retort. He must really be shaken, Dairine thinks. He thanks Spot for his insight and goes back to where Nita and Ronan are nominally playing cards but actually watching Kit out of the corners of their eyes. Kit slides in between them and puts and arm around Ronan’s shoulders in a quick hug, then turns and lays his head on Nita’s shoulder, pressing tight against her. Nita holds him close with both her arms for a long moment, then kisses the top of his head.

Dairine looks away, and finds Roshaun on her other side, eyes on her. She plucks the lollipop from his mouth and starts sucking on it herself, just because, but no sooner is it in her mouth than she’s taking it out again and staring at it in disgust. “Of course it’s cherry. Ugh, you can have it.”

She holds it back out to him, and he takes it, holding it away from her. He wraps his nearer arm around her. “Ready to go home yet?” he asks, squeezing her shoulder briefly, before leaning back and using that hand to support himself.

“Promise your mom doesn’t have any mind controlling machines hiding anywhere?”

“I make no promises about my mother’s behavior or possessions, ever. But I sincerely doubt it.”

“Then yes, I’m ready.”

Not much later, Wohh appears with a puff of displaced air, carrying an official-looking piece of paper. “This is an order from the planetary council,” she says after the greetings, “thanking you all for your assistance and invaluable input, and asking you to please leave, immediately.”

She says it all with a slight grin, though, and a cheerful voice, so Dairine knows they are not in any danger.

“Kit,” Wohh continues, “we may contact you to ask for details, but we will find one of our own to complete the negotiations.”

“Glad to hear it,” Kit says. “Mostly she just wants credit for what she does for you, but she’s happy to do the work. Best of luck with it.”

Wohh moves forward and offers him a tentacle to shake. “Thank you, cousin. Go well, and in your own mind.”

“ _Dai_ ,” Kit says, accepting it.

Wohh and Lyra make the rounds, thanking everyone and saying good-bye, and soon enough Dairine and company are all on their way to the nearest worldgate facility.

“Do you want to stop by Wellakh with us?” She offers, but she knows Nita will decline.

“No, but thank you. Let’s make plans for a few days from now, we’ll come. But Kit needs to rest, and _someone_ ”—she elbows Ronan—“has a date to plan.”

“Oh?” Kit asks, eyes dancing.

“Shut it, Neets, or you’re gonna be more than Trouble…”

“Go well, cousins,” Roshaun says. “See you soon.”

Dairine watches Nita punch in the code for Carmela’s closet. Roshaun, at the next gate, puts in for Wellakh.

Dairine seizes Nita up in a hug at the last minute. “Bring dad when you come, okay?”

“You got it,” Nita says in her ear. “Love you, Dari.”

“Love you too, Neets. Go, you’ll miss the gate.”

One by one, they all step into their gates and vanish.

**  
**  


**Author's Note:**

> I didn't have time to address it, but it really is interesting how many times Kit has gotten into a sticky situation because he has empathized too well with someone (Darryl, ~~the Martian guy whose name I can't spell...~~ Khretef, thank you S.M.F. :) )


End file.
